Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God

"In this book Greta Christina tackles the subject of death with the insight of a philosopher and the relaxed candor of a friend — that really cool, intelligent friend who understands and cares."
-David Niose, author of Fighting Back the Right: Reclaiming America from the Attack on Reason

Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God by Greta Christina -- available now!

Coming Out Atheist

“"Witty, wise, helpful, and humane, this clear and engaging book is most timely.”
-Phil Zuckerman, Ph.D., author of Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion

Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why by Greta Christina -- available now in ebook, print, and audiobook!

I Support Atheism Plus!

Atheists plus we care about social justice.
Atheists plus we support women’s rights.
Atheists plus we protest racism.
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia.
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

EVENTS

The Rest Stop

Please note: This story contains extensive sexual content — what with it being porn and all — and is not to be read by readers who are under 18, or who do not want to read adult material.

The Rest Stop

He pulls his pickup truck into the rest stop. It’s one in the morning on a weeknight. The rest stop isn’t a happenstance place where he stopped to catch some sleep before moving on. It’s his destination.

Nobody else is there yet. But another truck that had been behind him on the highway pulls in after him. He ducks his head, prays to God for forgiveness, then flashes his lights. A specific sequence of shorts and longs, signaling what he’s here for: signaling generally, and then more particularly, what he’s here for. A sequence he now knows intimately. A sequence he sometimes has nightmares about.

The truck behind him flashes back.

He gets out of his truck, goes into the men’s room, walks over to the metal sink. He bends over it, braces himself with his hands. He waits. He tries to pretend that he isn’t here for what he’s here for; that he’s just pulling over at a rest stop to wash his face, and that what’s about to happen will be a shock, nothing he planned for, against his will. The fact that he has inserted lube into his asshole with a syringe makes this pretense impossible. He waits.

The man walks in behind him.

He shudders, more in fear than anticipation. He knows that the man could be dangerous. Bad things — worse than what he’s already doing — could happen. Bad things have already happened. He’s been hurt: some of these men are rough, rougher than he likes. He’s been torn, before he learned about the lube. He’s had his wallet stolen. One guy took off his belt and beat his ass with it before he fucked him. The guy must have gotten his signals wrong; or maybe he just didn’t care, maybe the guy was a genuine psycho. He stood there, bent over at the sink, and took it. He hadn’t been belted since he was a kid, it hurt like the fires of Judgment, tears poured down his face as the belt landed on his ass again and again, and he gripped the sink tighter and gritted his teeth and let it happen. The man finally pushed his cock into him, and the burning pain on the skin of his ass felt clean, like it balanced out the sinful shame of the hard cock he’d invited inside. He felt like he deserved it. He felt like maybe God would have mercy on him on Judgment Day, if He remembered the welts that were on his ass when this man’s cock was pushing inside it.

He never used to get off on pain and shame. As sick as he was, as sick as he knows this thing is, that was never his sickness. But now, after years of getting fucked too hard in rest stop bathrooms, his body has been trained. The shame he feels about his lusts, and the repulsive places he goes to fulfill them, and the disgraceful, sometimes painful things he lets happen to him, are now hopelessly tangled up with the lust itself. The night that he got beaten with the belt, he went on the Internet afterward, and looked up the headlight code for “beat me first.” He hasn’t used it yet, but he always thinks about it.

This man, tonight, now comes up behind him. The man sets a hand on his shoulder — warm, weirdly reassuring. Then the hands come around his waist, and undo his belt, and pull down his trousers and his shorts. He feels the familiar throb in his cock, and the familiar shame, as his ass and his cock are exposed, and this thing he’s doing becomes unmistakably what it is. He spread his legs and waits. The man clears his throat.

Oh, Jesus have pity, no. A talker. Usually all this takes place in total silence. But some of them like to talk. They tell him what a slut he is; they ask him how he likes their big cocks in his pussyhole; they tell him fantasies about the disgusting perverted things they want to do to him. He desperately wishes they wouldn’t. He feels like he has no defense against their words: his armor is down, he is bent over a men’s room sink in a filthy rest stop with his pants pulled down, getting fucked in the ass or about to get fucked, and whatever they say goes right into the core of his soul.

The man speaks.

“God, I want you.

“You are so fucking hot, do you know that? Such a tight little ass, and such tight wiry legs, and those gorgeous hands. You are amazing. I want you so much. I can’t wait to fuck you.”

The words are painful. The man’s admiration makes him flinch, more than any filthy fantasies he’s had to listen to. The words make him feel like… he doesn’t want to think about what they make him feel like. The voice is faintly familiar. Someone from local TV or radio, maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time. The voice goes on.

“I love how dirty this is, don’t you? I love that all over the world, men are having dirty fantasies about this, and here we are actually doing it. It’s so fucking hot.”

He feels the hands on him again. On his bare ass, squeezing and fondling; he braces himself and spreads his legs wider. But then the hands wander: down to caress his thighs, up and over to rub his shoulders, pulling his shirt up to play with his nipples and fondle his chest.

He hates it when they do this. It makes him feel… he doesn’t want to think about it. Like a faggot. The word jumps into his mind, and won’t be pushed back. He despises it, he struggles against it. But this man’s hands are hard to resist: strong, calloused, and at the same time intelligent and curious: exploring his body, seeking out his hot spots, lingering when they find a good one and then teasing away to search for another. He shudders. He normally just stands still and silent and lets himself get fucked; but he can’t help it, he begins to moan, and to squirm. God help him, he wants this so much.

“God, I want you,” the man says. “Say it.”

He shakes his head. He can’t. He’ll come here, he’ll flash the lights, he’ll bend over the sink and offer his ass to be fucked. But he can’t say out loud that he wants it. If he does, he’ll be lost.

The man’s fingers toy at the opening of his asshole: teasing, lingering, making him squirm and buck. “Come on. Say it.”

He feels like he’s drowning. He clutches on to the last shreds of his soul, keeping him afloat. The man’s fingers are circling his asshole, widening the rip in his life raft, pulling him down. He struggles, and sinks.

“Please,” he says. “Yes. I want you.”

A finger goes in, not even an inch, then pulls out again. “You want me to what. Say it. Tell me what you want me to do.”

His mouth is dry. “I want you to fuck me.”

The finger goes in deeper. A second one joins it. “Say it again. Keep talking. Tell me that you want me. Tell me what you want me to do.”

He’s falling now, and the momentum of his fall makes every word come easier. “Please,” he says. “Please keep fingering me. And then… fuck me in the ass. Please slide your hard cock into my asshole. God, I want your cock in me so much. Please fuck me, make me come with your cock deep inside me.” All the words he could never say out loud, all the words he could barely stand to think, he says now to this man. He knows the words are dirty, but they pour out of him like a firehose of clean water clearing out a sewer pipe. The man fingers him, and then slides his cock in: gentle, and nasty. The words gushing out of him begin to mix with moans, and gibberish.

He reaches down as he babbles, and grips his cock. He never does this. He always waits for the other guy to jerk him off; or he waits for the guy to leave, and jerks himself off in the toilet, alone. But now he licks his hand and strokes his cock, still begging out loud for the fucking that he’s getting, matching his rhythm to the cock stroking inside him. The guy starts to talk again. “Yeah, that’s right. Jerk yourself off while I fuck you. That’s good. That is so right. God, I can feel you squeezing around me. God, that’s…” They are both gibbering now, talking over each other, their words and grunts overlapping, intertwining. He feels the man straining, and then coming, the careful seductive rhythm switching to a hard frenzy deep inside him. It triggers a blown fuse in his brain. His moans rise in pitch to a wail of despair, and he comes into his hand, the man’s cock still inside his ass.

His cum drips off his hand onto the foul rest stop floor. The man takes his hand and squeezes, smearing the cum onto both their fingers. The man pulls out of his ass, tugs on his hand, turns him around to face him.

He’s never looked any of these men in the face. He looks at this one now.

Fuck.

He knows him. Paul. From his parish. Paul, who he sees at church every Sunday. Paul, whose mother is on the church building committee with his wife Adele. A few years younger than him, solid guy, good looking, everyone always wondered why he didn’t marry. Christ. That’s why his voice sounded familiar. Merciful God, he thinks, please forgive me. Paul seems oblivious to his horror. Paul gives him a wide grin: happy, and unsurprised.

“I saw your truck pull in,” Paul says. “I recognized it, but I couldn’t believe it was you. I’ve been looking at you for you so long, I never thought — my God. I so need to see you again. Not here. When can we meet? There’s a motel down near the city. A place I know about. They won’t care.”

He shakes his head. This was bad enough already. He can’t go any further. He can’t go there, to that motel, with this man that he likes, with this man whose name he knows. He can’t be what this man wants him to be. “I’m sorry, Paul. No. I don’t — I’m not a faggot.”

Every man who has ever fucked him here, who has said anything about it at all, has said that they’re not a faggot. The man who beat his ass with a belt before he fucked him said afterwards that he wasn’t a faggot. Paul strokes his cheek, looks at him with pity and compassion.

“Yes. You are. You’re a faggot.

“You are a faggot, Albert. I am a faggot. And I want to see you again. I am a faggot, I am a gay man, and I want to suck your cock, and play with your nipples, and massage your ass until you beg me to fuck you. I want you to tell me every sexy thing you’ve ever thought about, and I want to do it with you. Don’t — Albert, you come here. You must have been coming here for I don’t know how long. You’re a faggot. I’m a faggot. Who cares. When can I see you again?”

He’d been right.

This man was dangerous.

He has just been fucked in the ass, and his pants are still down, and he has no defense against Paul’s words. His armor is gone. The words that Paul is saying go right into the core of his soul.

He is a faggot.

He reaches out to grip Paul’s hair by the back of the head. He leans in and kisses him, soft, and deep. He can feel Paul’s surprise, and joy, spring up in the man’s body like a sapling. He clutches Paul close, and presses against him, and their softening cocks rub together along with their tongues. He has been coming to this place, and to places like it, for thirteen years. He has never kissed another man before today.

He finally breaks away. “Wednesdays,” he says. “I usually come here on Wednesdays. Tell me the name of the motel.”

Greta, your stories are so hot. I have only recently discovered *good* porn, and it never ceases to amaze me how little the genders and orientations of the characters have to do with whether I get turned on. It’s truly all about quality writing!

You are so close to reality here. When I was younger and full of hormones I would go to places like this and do similar things, Yet I never felt I was gay. So much into the opposite sex and no I couldn’t kiss a man, but sex is sex and gender dosen’t seem to matter when the hormones are flowing. Now I’m very old and never do these things but don’t have one ounce of regret over the many men who have masturbated me or sucked me.

You are, Greta, a True Force of Nature! How you so masterly understand this situation defies me. You are astonishing! You were fascinating here in Sacramento, and now I’ll have your blog to look forward to reading!

I loved you short story Rest Stop, and I wanted to comment briefly about it. What I liked most was how you chose to use two Christians as the main characters! It’s a perspective that tends to get lost in the “culture wars”, that yes, there are “queer” Christians, and that this is going to have a profound impact on Christianity itself! I used to be a Christian, but this issue (LGBT), ultimately made me leave the faith. I couldn’t be both!
Though late, I want to make mention of a NYTimes article (4/19/11) Even On Religious Campus’, Students Fight For Gay Identiy. It was a very interesting article, and a fascinating glimpse into perhaps Christianity’s next, and perhaps biggest, crisis! (Secularism is Christianity’s biggest threat!)
There is an on-line site that was mentioned in this Times article that I found very moving. It’s at http://www.huqueerpress.com, The State of the Gay, it’s called.
I’m not sure that you can actually reconcile Christianity, with being LGBT (maybe it’s possible), but for me, it was not!
Your story Rest Stop, reminded me of how much b.s. you go through in a straight world. I found myself relating very much to that curious form of self-destructive behavor that the first character was wrestling with. Wow. It was like you were reading my own thoughts!
I love your blogs, and I visit frequently! My wife has enjoyed your pieces, too! (We have a “mixed-oriention” marriage.) Your blogs are an oasis in the desert! Thanks agaain!